Nick's desciption of codifying tacit knowledge is fine if you assume a
very stable and repeatable process. How do you handle a highly variable
and changing world, where innovation plays an important part. (The little
child grows up, learns to drive, and changes her concept of traffic and
her relation to it.)
Measurement is great for what it captures, but one needs to recognise what
it misses out on.
Gray Southon
>Of course, some tacit knowledge is easier to codify than others but
>through the process of explicitly trying to describe the knowledge one
>gets closer to sharing, transforming and measuring it. Another example is
>the case of the little child who wants to cross the street. She really
>doesn't understand integral calculus, geometry, kinematic physics and
>physiology which are all instantaneously used to describe the algorithm
>required to cross the street. She just does it naturally. However, I can
>study this process and watch her cross the street a thousand times and
>eventually codify all the processes that go on in her head. This journey
>of codification will allow me to measure certain aspects of the knowledge
>she doesn't even know she possesses.
>
>NICK BONTIS
>nbontis@ivey.uwo.ca
Gray Southon
Consultant in Health Management Research and Analysis
15 Parthenia St., Caringbah, NSW 2229, Australia
Ph/Fax +61 2 9524 7822, mobile +61 414 295 328
e-mail gsouthon@ozemail.com.au
Web Page: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsouthon/
Temporarily: Lecturer in Health Management
University of New England, Armidale, NSW.
--Gray Southon <gsouthon@ozemail.com.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>